SeedSeller Academy

What Are You Telling Yourself? [Academy]

What Are You Telling Yourself?

Have you ever been out in public and saw someone talking to themselves, out loud. Most often people doing this are labeled mentally disturbed and are often committed to a facility for treatment. 

But few people realize we all talk to ourselves all the time, just not out loud, unless you also want to find yourself in a strait jacket.  But the person we have conversations with most often is ourselves. Our internal dialogue goes on almost nonstop. It can range from singing a song in our head, rehearsing a speech or repeating a phone number. We may go through our plans for the day, internally critique someone we see for the way they look or talk to ourselves about a project we should have finished long ago. 

We may work through problems in our mind or hype ourselves up to meet a challenge. Very often we use internal dialogue to talk ourselves into doing something we’re afraid of doing. 

I’m always talking to myself, not out loud of course. Well sometimes I call myself a dumbass out loud when I do a mindless thing like knock over a lamp with my gorilla length arms or trip over a step with my clown size feet. But those things won’t get me committed. Most of my internal talk is about how I can be a better person, a better father, a better grandfather and a better mentor to my clients.

I’m constantly in conversation with myself, critiquing my last workout, my last training session or my last speech. I’m constantly discussing in my mind what I need to do each day as well as the rest of the week. I’m always thinking about the last conversation I had with a seed seller and how I could have done a better job explaining.  

It’s important to have internal dialogue when you’re in sales, especially seed sales. Since seed is a living breathing organism subject to more than a thousand variables and responsible for a farmer’s entire livelihood, there are plenty of things for reps to think about, or should I say, talk about in their minds.

When I was selling seed I never stopped thinking about every customer who bought seed from me. I was constantly discussing with myself whether or not I had prepared the grower well enough to raise my varieties properly. I was discussing with myself how I was going to explain a price raise to growers who challenged it, or why I couldn’t get a favorite variety they had on order. 

But one of the most common internal conversations salespeople have centers on making prospecting calls. Most of the dialogue seed sellers have going on in their minds is planning how to make prospecting as successful as possible. We’re all usually thinking about how to plan our approach. We go over in our minds what to talk about, including the size of the order we’re going to ask for and what we’re going to do if they don’t want to buy that much. But when we dialogue the concept of prospecting in our minds it usually creates guilty feelings for not having done enough of it. I used to beat myself up all year long for that one. Why didn’t I just make more prospecting calls and settle the argument in my mind?

What kind of dialogue do you have going on in your mind every day concerning seed selling? Are you telling yourself what a great job you do or are you feeling guilty for not getting more selling done prior to harvest?

Research shows that positive self-talk can improve self-esteem, stress management and wellbeing. It can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety and reduce risk of self-harm and suicide. As we communicate more with ourselves, we’re more able to locate the sources of our feelings and experience them more fully. It also helps us work through problems by making them the forefront of our thoughts.

But regardless of the messages stirring around in your mind, the best way to enhance feelings of positivity and progress  is to get your ass out on the road and call on prospects and customers. I found after more than 45 years in sales, virtually every problem and every negative thought went away once I was out doing my job, calling on prospects and customers. Everything was suddenly right in the world. 

Make sure you spend enough time doing what you are supposed to be doing as a seller, selling seed. You’ll find that it will not only make you happy but it will also keep you from being put into a strait jacket for standing outside your seed warehouse talking out loud to yourself.

Happy Selling,

Rod Osthus

Why Do Salespeople Hate Scripts? [Academy]

Why Do Salespeople Hate Scripts?

The great Bill Walsh, Super Bowl winning coach of the San Francisco 49er’s said, “People without plans are like a line of infantrymen without a strong leader, they’re much more likely to get overwhelmed and fall apart. He said, to avoid those risks I scripted the first 25 plays of the beginning of each game. That way I could sleep at night and know exactly what was going to happen before the game even started because I had a plan. He said you can’t just shoot in the dark and respond to what’s thrown at you. You need to have the plan and make your opponent respond to you. Don’t try to make it up on the fly.”

In my training sales sessions, I lay the groundwork for a step-by-step process on how to make sales calls that will lead the prospect to liking you, trusting you and wanting to buy from you. Later in my program I pull together everything we’ve talked about during the training and put it into a complete sale story that I then highlight and put in the form of a storybook. The storybook is intended to guide the conversation during the sales call from start to finish.

It’s not a presentation but a conversation. 

At that point in my training I pick a student at random to come up and role play a sales call with me and play the part of the farmer. Once the call is over and everyone sees how smoothly it can go using this process and almost everyone is impressed.

But there is always someone in the room who will yell out as my partner walks back to his seat, “You were way too easy on him.”

At that point the partner will respond, “You try to stump him or throw him off, you can’t do it, I tried. He’s in total control, leading the conversation where I don’t even know where I’m going and when I tried to object he handled it smoothly and got right back on track.” 

All of the partners I’ve had over the years will say, “YOU CAN’T DO IT, YOU TRY IT. 

The reason my sales calls, whether in the classroom or in the field with sales reps calling on farmers go so smoothly is because I write my story out word for word, then practice it word for word ahead of time. I role play it with a partner at least 10 times to make sure it sounds good and I know what to say when the prospect objects or asks questions. It’s all about role play practicing around a sales script.

But when I give my word for word script to students, most of them say, well, that’s not what I would say, or what if it doesn’t work like you want it to?

They have no script, no plan and no sales story of their own, but they’re quick to critique mine even after they see it work. 

I tell every sales rep who wants to know how to be successful making sales calls and become great at handling objections that it’s all having a prepared, well- practiced story, a plan. They need to write their story word for word then practice it that way. As they practice they will modify it for better fit. 

The sales story and the story book do several very important things for every seed sellers who want to make selling seed easier and more productive.

1. They force the seller to think about what to say, how to say it and when to say it. That’s the definition of being in control and getting what you want.
2. They serve as a guide when practicing and role playing the sales call. If you don’t have a play book to practice from, you can’t practice running plays to make sure everything is working the way you want it to.
3. The sales storybook serves as a conversation piece for the prospect and customer and keeps it from becoming a sales pitch. It allows the call to be interactive which prospects love.
4. A good sales story used with the guidance of a storybook more than doubles sales success. 

But why do most salespeople resist doing one of the simplest things that will make them over the top successful if they do it? It’s because they’re lazy. It only takes a few hours to put together a word for word story but for many that seems too hard because they first have to think about what to say and how to say it. But that’s what my scripts are for. If they did nothing else but follow my script word for word, they increase their chances of getting orders ten-fold. 

As all of you know, there are only two things you need to do to be successful in sales. 1. Make lots of calls and 2. Have a great story. The story is everything that happens once the contact is made. It’s how you look, how your vehicle looks, what your materials look like and how much preparation the prospect thinks you put into preparing for his or her particular sales calls. 

If you haven’t been preparing a script prior to making sales calls, the idea of having a great story goes out the window. 

Start writing your story word for word. It will tell you how good or bad your presentation actually is and wouldn’t it be a tragedy if your prospects thought you were really bad but you didn’t know it and they bought seed from you out of pity? It would be like having bad breath and no one telling you.

Your relationship is bound to be short lived.

Happy Selling,

Rod 

Which Sales Line Are You Standing In?

Which Sales Line Are You Standing In?

I love the Seinfeld episode where George is in a big hurry to get somewhere, so he hales a taxicab in very heavy traffic and jumps into the back seat. The driver starts inching ahead in congested traffic but George is very impatient. He sees an opening in the lane next to them so he begs the driver to change lanes.

Just as they change lanes, the lane they were in speeds up and moves past them as they sit, stalled in the new lane. George sees that he made a mistake and again begs the cab driver to change back to the other lane so the driver does. At that point the driver stops at a yellow light and George gets upset and rants and raves for not running the yellow.

The driver gets mad and tells George to get out of his cab.

It is so funny.

How many times have you changed lanes in traffic or in the grocery story and when you did, discovered it was the wrong decision?

I’m sure we’ve all done it.

Seed sellers are also notorious for changing lanes, metaphorically speaking. It comes from the great influence environment can have on the performance of the living organisms we sell. Variety performance often changes every year based on the one thousand variables.

When the performance of certain varieties change from year to the next, seed sellers often believe they need to change to different varieties to compensate for disappointing results the previous year.

They try to outguess mother nature and introduce different varieties into a grower’s program because of what happened the previous season to a variety. But most often, those changes turn out to be bad decisions. First of all, pulling varieties out of a line-up based on one year’s performance tells the farmer you’ve just been guessing as what to put on his farm and that you’re still guessing. Second, it shows you’re not focused on raising the grower’s entire farm yield average which should be the ONLY focus and instead you’re looking at an individual variety.

And lastly, just as George Costanza in Seinfeld found himself in a worst position each time they changed lanes, the same is true when a seller jumps from one variety to the next based on a single year’s results. It hurts both the farmer and the seller. 

I’m not saying a seed seller shouldn’t introduce new varieties into a portfolio. But you do it only when you believe you can improve the portfolio. 

But changing varieties isn’t the only lane change we make. We often change lanes by offering new customers special deals like a first look at new varieties or extra discounts for being first time buyers, instead of staying in the lane that got us where we are by taking care of our most loyal customers.

Seed sellers often change lanes by jumping from program to program in efforts to get sales, instead of forging ahead in the lane of selling value where they belong. That’s a lane change you don’t want to make. 

If you ever find yourself feeling that you need to change lanes, I mean play Russian Roulette with your varieties or your programs, think again. Look at your sales offering, your sales story and your sales approach. It may not be the varieties or programs at all, it just may be YOU.     

Happy Selling, Rod Osthus

Don’t Rely On The Domino Effect! [Academy]

Most people are familiar with the game of Dominos.  The objective of the game is for players to take a domino from the ones in their hand and attach it to one end of those already played so that the sum of the end tiles is divisible by five or three. If they don’t have a playable domino in their hand they need to draw one from what’s called the bone pile. The first player to get rid of all of their dominos wins. 

But we’ve also seen dominos stood on end in a long line to show how pushing one domino over, into the one beside it, knocking it over, can create a chain reaction that knocks over every domino in that line. In fact, in his excellent book, “The One Thing”, Gary Keller talks about a company in the Netherlands that set the world record chain reaction domino fall by lining up nearly 4.5 million dominos then knocking them over with the push of just the first domino. Research has also shown that a single domino can knock over another domino next to it that is 50% larger that itself when pushed into that larger domino. Therefore, the smallest domino could in essence, topple one the size of a skyscraper if each domino in the line was 50% larger than the one before it, leading to the last one that is skyscraper in size. 

Unfortunately, the domino effect has also been tried, unsuccessfully by seed sellers who have attempted to use it as a fast way to increase sales. It’s based on the strategy of writing a small trial size order with new customers. They sell the buyer just one variety or enter their test plot or give them free seed. Their hope is small actions like those will get the prospect to place a much larger order the next year. That’s equivalent to expecting the first small commitment to knock over a much larger commitment, what I call the domino effect.

That strategy never works for a number of reasons.

First, small trial size orders generate virtually no commitment from the new buyer. They don’t really care if that small amount of seed does well or not, it won’t in essence, knock over a larger order for the sales rep. Next, farmers don’t buy seed, they buy perceptions. How many times have you seen a customer who has been loyal to a competitor of yours leave his favorite company if you beat that competitor in a side by side the first time they compete?

The answer is never.

When have you seen a customer who is loyal to your competitor leave his favorite company and buy from you because his best product let him down?

That seldom happens either.  

And third, until a new prospects like you, trust you and “perceive” that you are bringing value outside of products, they won’t buy from you. The prospect needs to truly believe you can help him in his farming operation.  

Just so you know, when used properly, the domino effect CAN work for you and help you dramatically increase sales. Start by dressing up so farmers can perceive you as being smart, a leader and professional. Make sure your vehicle is spotless inside and out so they can perceive you as representing a company that cares about details and is quality driven. Practice your sales opening so you take the prospect Outside the Circle right away and keep them there.  

Ask them where they want to take their yields the next year and what their plans are to get there. Take them to their fields to show them you don’t focus on yield or plant populations anymore, but on maximizing bushels per 1000 plants. 

Can you see how the domino effect can be played out? Can you see how each step, starting with how you dress can continue to raise perceptions and increase interest in doing business with you while knocking down their level a doubt? Doubt is the biggest domino in the buying chain.

You can use the domino effect the way I just described it, but never use it in attempts to increase order size. Use it instead to raise perception and ultimately knockdown doubt, the largest domino in the sales chain.  

Happy Selling,

Rod Osthus

Do You Have a Leak in Your Sales Boat? [Academy]

Do You Have a Leak in Your Sales Boat?  

Many seed sellers lose business from current customers every year that often go undetected.

When sellers don’t know they are losing customers they also don’t realized they’re starting the new sales season in the hole.  That means every unit of new sales they get will go to bringing them BACK to where they ended up the previous year. Those new sales are used to compensate for losses they endured from  customers who stopped buying. 

Too often, field sellers don’t know they’ve lost customers because they weren’t with every one of them at harvest to solidify next year’s plan and seed order for the next year.  In fact, it’s often late into the selling season before sales reps even realize some customers aren’t going to buy what they bought the previous year. Until they get back to the sales base they finished with the previous year, new sales are simply used to patch up a broken territory.

I call that having a “leak in your boat.” 

Once a sales rep determines he or she has a leak in their boat, that is they have been losing sales from current customers, they can’t just go charging out there and start calling on new customers in an attempt to fill in for what was lost. There are certain protocols sellers need to follow so they know how many sales they need to replace and how to make sure the leak is completely plugged.

First of all, like having an actual leak in boat, the first thing the Captain needs to do is make sure all of the existing passengers are ok. Likewise, sales reps need to make sure all of their current customers are solid and are going to keep buying at the same level or higher than the previous year. If the sales boat continues to leak because additional customers plan to stop buying and the rep is not aware of it, it does little good to add more sales because the goal cannot be reached due to the continued leak, or loss of sales. The leak was not stopped.

Next, once every customer is deemed as being solid, it’s essential to find out the source of the leak. That is, why did customers stop buying in the first place? If the reason isn’t found and fixed, other customers may also stop buying in the future. Once the reason for customers leaving or deciding to buy less is discovered, it can be fixed, preventing any more losses of current sales.

The last step is to attack the problem of replacing lost sales. That means putting together an aggressive prospecting plan then practicing and role-playing it over and over. That plan also needs to include strategies that make every new customer want to become a permanent customer. That means showing them how you focus on helping them raise yields and not just on trying to sell them something. 

There is so much opportunity in the marketplace to get new sales because about 30% of the seed market moves around every year looking for a new home. That’s how much farmers change their minds during and after harvest. That means many sales reps have a leak in their boat because their losses become increased sales for us. That also means sales from customers who buy less than the previous year will need to be replaced in the form of new business.  To make sales gains count, you need to make sure there is no leak in your boat while taking  the 30% free market from other companies who still have leaks in their boats and don’t even know it.

Happy Selling, 

Rod Osthus

Why Salespeople Don't Hit Their Sales Goals? [Academy]

Did You Ever Wonder Why Salespeople Don’t Hit Their Sales Goals?

Robert Brault said, “We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.”

When I ask seed sellers what their primary goal is, they always say the same thing, “to reach my sales goal.” Then I ask them what that means and they always look at me funny and say, “It means to sell more seed”, as if I don’t get it.  To them, that is their primary goal when in fact, as Robert Brault says, it’s actually the lesser goal.

How can achieving a sales goal be a lesser goal when that’s what your company needs to have you do?  After all, it’s the reason seed sellers exist, to achieve their seed sales goal, isn’t it? But that kind of thinking is the reason seed sellers don’t make their goals. They don’t understand the difference between their real primary goal and what is really the lesser goal which they too often focused on.

What sales reps consider their primary goal of achieving their sales goal is not the end goal but their lesser goal. Instead, their primary goal is to fully execute the process that takes them to their sales goal. Without working the processes, the sales goal can never be achieved. That’s where most salespeople fail. They set a sales goal, then focus on that number instead of focusing on perfect execution of the steps to achieving that number.  

For example, if your goal is to increase seed sales by 5000 units, that’s not your primary goal. Your primary goal is how many new prospects you will need to call on to get the number of new customers you need to sell at a given order size to get your increase and achieve your sales goal. Your primary goal is always the critical element that ends up determining whether or not you make your sales goal. 

Do you see how your so-called primary goal of getting 5000 units of increase becomes your lesser goal because you can’t achieve it without your primary goal of contacting the number of prospects needed?

Are you focused on lesser goals that are keeping you from achieving your primary goal? For example, do you have a primary goal of getting customers to order their seed before harvest but it’s not happening? That’s because you’re avoiding your real primary goal of setting the date with each grower to do their cropping plan prior to harvest when you’re visiting their planter in the spring, or during the post planting report card visit or during a summer field visit.  Getting them to order their seed before harvest is your lesser goal because it won’t happen unless your primary goal of setting the date for summer development of the seed plan is in place. That’s your primary goal.

There are so many examples of seed sellers who confuse primary goals and lesser goals. Discover which one you’re actually focusing on, then spend your time and effort in the right place. I bet you’re like 98% of all seed sellers. They don’t think about the difference between a primary goal and a lesser goal, therefore, they’re spinning their wheels, not making the progress they need and want. 

My primary goal is not to do this podcast every week. That’s my lesser goal. My primary goal is to come up with a topic and write the podcast so I can achieve my lesser goal of recording it. 

Happy Selling,

Rod Osthus

I Mourn for Those Who Have Nothing to Sell [Academy]

How Much Do You Vary in Value?

I feel bad for sales reps who lose their ability to sell seed. I mourn the fact that if they once had that ability, can no longer do it. The tenure of these seed sellers often comes to an end because of their own actions, or should I say, inactions. 

This year is no different from most years in agriculture. In fact, it’s getting so you can’t tell one year from the other when it comes to the problems and complaints farmers have. With depressed markets, high prices and the possibility of below average crop yields in many areas, there’s increasing pressure on sellers to justify their value and the value of their products because farmers are so focused on saving money to stay in business. Having pressure from down markets is one thing, but when competitors make it worse by giving farmers whatever they want, value sellers can easily feel ganged up on. That causes even the staunchest of value sellers, the ones who know THEY are the real value, to question the value they are actually bringing to a sale. 

I see this every day in my training sessions. As soon as I remind everyone THEY are the only value a farmer gets when he buys seed, I can see the lack of belief in their eyes. I tell them farmers can buy anything they want from anyone they want, at any price they want, but they can’t get the sales rep. Many don’t believe they bring that kind of value to a grower. 

But even those who KNOW THEY are the only value farmers get during a seed sale, often allow their own value to fluctuate with market prices, farmers’ attitudes and farmers’ search of ways to save money. Their belief in themselves and what they can bring to farmers wavers and that can’t happen because farmers always win that game.

A friend of mine who was a very successful seed seller for years always said, “When the markets are down and farmers are in a bad mood, and the going gets tough, the tough get the hell out of town.” Of course he said that in jest. But his point was that so many reps give up the fight when things get hard, stop selling value and make themselves into a commodity. 

What good are you to customers if you don’t bring value outside of your products and services. A robot can deliver the products and services. Farmers need a knowledgeable rep who can apply production principles farmers can’t apply on their own because they don’t know how. Top seed sellers know how to take farmers to new levels of profitability, regardless of what the markets do.

If you give in and give up your own value, you become useless to your company, yourself and most of all your customers. They need the value you bring now more than ever. Don’t disappoint them. Don’t let your value vary with farmer attitudes. Instead, stay consistent and use your value to shore-up farmer attitudes and keep them on track to profitability. Use your talents to help them make more money. After all, you’re the only one who can do it.

Happy Selling,

Rod Osthus

Don’t Let Customers Waste Valuable Time [Academy]

Don’t Let Customers Waste Valuable Time?

You’ve all heard the quote by Abraham Lincoln, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

A sales rep was trying to get one of her good customers who was notorious for doing his cropping plan late, to stop putting it off.  The farmer started telling her during the summer that he wanted to wait until after harvest to see what the crop was going to do before he put together his cropping plan and wrote his seed order.

But when harvest was over, his next comment was, “Input costs are too high so I want to wait for the deals to come out before I decide what I’m going to do.” And when the rep contacted him again, he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. My wife and I are going on a trip to Europe for two weeks. When we get back we can talk about  the crop plan. 

You will still have plenty of seed for me.  

Soon, after they had returned from their trip the rep stopped to see him. It was only about 8 weeks from planting.  The farmer and his wife were both very excited to share their vacation experience with the young rep so she listened intently.  At just the right moment the rep said to the farmer and his wife, “It sounds like that was quite an amazing trip. It must have taken a lot of planning. How much time did you guys spend planning for that beautiful vacation?”  The farmer proudly replied, “We planned for nearly six months and we kept updating the itinerary as the time got closer. All of the pre-trip planning really paid off because that’s what made the trip such a success. It was also less stressful once we knew the plan was in place and all we had to do was follow it.”

The rep realized this was a teaching moment and a great opportunity so she took advantage of it and said to them, “You and your wife spent six months planning your vacation, but you’ve yet to spend even one hour putting together a plan for your farming business that made that kind of vacation possible. At what point did you decide to leave the success of your farming operation to chance and instead, create a serious plan for a vacation?” The farmer turned to her with a sheepish look and said, “Oh my gosh, you’re right.  I don’t have much time left do I.”  The rep said no you don’t.” She had made an impact on this procrastinator but she wasn’t going to stop there. She said, “Let’s get started right now, but when we do, I want you to make me a promise.” He said, “Ok.”  “I want you to promise you will take all of the benefits you experienced from planning your amazing trip and apply them to your farming operation so we can make it amazing too.

Early planning is the number one factor to raising top yields so promise me that you will help me raise your yields by following my lead and doing your cropping plan prior to harvest next year.” He said, “I promise.”

Farmers are among the biggest procrastinators in the world because for most things they do, there is no set deadline. Their entire schedule can be as flexible as they want it to be. But that philosophy often causes them to waste a lot of time doing things and thinking about things that don’t make them money. They need to be thinking of ways to increase profits, even when they’re sitting in a machine or hauling grain. The ONLY time a farmer is making money is when he is putting together he only source for making money and that is his cropping plan. That is when he is paid the most for his time but spends the least amount of time doing it.

It was a lesson this farmer learned and will never forget.  He didn't have a goal for his business, therefore; he had no plan for his business which also means he had no profit plan for his business.  Farmers waste a lot of hours doing nonproductive thinking and he is a master at pulling seed reps into those time-wasting conversations. Talking about the markets, the weather, products, technologies and other things that don’t generate profit wastes your time and his. Once again, the only time a farmer is increasing profit is when he is putting his profit plan(cropping plan) together for the next year.

All of the other hours, days, weeks, months and years are wasted with non-productive thinking. When you plan in advance, whether for a trip or how to increase sales, you will be successful beyond belief because you devoted your time to the only thing that generates the revenue in your business.

 

Happy Selling,

Rod Osthus

  

You Are Your Own “Think Tank”? [Academy]

You Are Your Own “Think Tank”?

Where do you get new ideas that help you lead customers and stay ahead of your competitors?  It’s obvious that sales reps who have a constant flow of new ideas that not only match the rising IQ of the marketplace, but also enhance it, sell more. The smartest, most successful people have one thing in common. 

They take time every day to think creatively.  Thinking creatively means thinking about how to solve problems, enhance performance and reach goals, regardless of how big or small those goals are.  

When do YOU choose to do nothing but think? 

Do you do it in the shower, during your morning meditation like my son Tom who calls it his “power hour, or do you do it when you’re alone in the car? Maybe you use the time just prior to falling asleep at night to do your thinking?  But with me, the thinking switch can be turned any time, whenever a stimulus charges my thinking circuit. I often get a stimulus to think of new ideas when I read a paragraph, a sentence or even a single word in an article. I seldom get my new thoughts from reading an entire book. Every book has a few key words that, at least for me, can spark a whole bunch of new ideas. The stimulus for a new idea can also come from something someone said or did during a conversation, or simply from something I happened to observe. Regardless of whether you turn the thinking switch on at a certain time every day, or your mind is constantly on the lookout for new ideas, thinking time is the most valuable time you will spend every day.

There are three very important things that happen when you set aside time to think. 

One, every new idea created simultaneously gets rid of any number of old ideas and activities associated with the new idea.

That leads to benefit number two. New ideas keep you from getting into a rut, becoming bored, stale and falling behind everyone else.  Just remember, a rut is simply a coffin with the ends kicked out. If you stay in a rut, you will die there. And last but not least, setting aside time to think puts YOU in charge of your life and your future.  It tells you that YOU’RE responsible for your life, and no one else. That “thought” alone will allow you to do things that will make you over the top successful.  

You are your best source for new ideas because you know your situation best and how those new ideas can be used. That allows you to use new ideas to improve your life and become more productive. But many salespeople don’t consider themselves their best source for new ideas. They either give up their ability to think on their own, or they don’t believe they have the ability to solve their own problems. They simply rely on their superiors, or people they view as authority figures. Don’t allow that to happen. You’re as capable as anyone in this endeavor. You have a very high powered, creative brain so use it. And if you’re in sales, the ability to think on your own about how to find new customers, increase sales to current customers, and maximize customer retention is the key to your success. Solving problems yourself is the fastest and most effective way to be successful. Every day you either get smarter or you get dumber.

That’s sounds harsh but it’s true.  This marketplace waits for no one and has been “dumbed down” by people who don’t spend enough time “thinking” about how to improve themselves so they can help improve the rest of society. Decide which one of those is your goal, then set aside time to think, every single day. It will increase your self-confidence; help you become a better leader and make you more successful.

That leads me back to my favorite quote of all time by Albert Einstein. He said, “The thinking that has brought me to where I am, has caused some problems that thinking at this level can no longer solve.” Start thinking new thoughts. It will solve your problems and keep you from dying in a rut.

The Rules of the Sales Game [Academy]

Greetings Everyone, 

Albert Einstein said, “You have to learn the rules of the game, then you have to play the game better than anyone else.”

What are the rules salespeople must follow to be successful in today’s marketplace? Many seed reps are following rules made decades ago that started out as strategies developed through trial and error. But almost all of those strategies, I mean rules, are now obsolete and detrimental to anyone using them in attempts to get and keep sales. 

A lot of damage is done when sellers try to play the game using those rules. Farmers have learned very quickly that it’s easy to get reps to stretch or even break rules to get what they want. These old rules put farmers in control leaving sellers to simply take what buyers wants to give them.

Here are 10 of the most common strategies that have turned into rules through universal adoption that virtually every sales rep blindly follows.

 

1. The best time to call on farmers to get orders is after harvest because before that they’re too busy to talk. NO, being to busy is just an excuse not a reason for delayed ordering. The no.1 factor for getting top yields is early crop planning. That means prior to harvest. 
2. Look for closing signs so you know when to ask for the order. We never close a sale anymore; we lead prospects into WANTING to do it. He closes himself.
3. Take any size order you can get, regardless how small because it means getting a foot in the door for a bigger sale next year. History has shown this strategy never works. Even if you beat his favorite company with the small amount of seed you sold him, he’ll think it was an accident and stay with his favorite company.
4. Deliver your seed to the customer’s warehouse after your competitors seed is already in his shed so you can place it in front of your competitor’s, that way he will plant yours first. You’re in dreamland if you think the farmer won’t move your seed out of the way so he can plant his favorite seed first.
5. Use early order programs to get growers to place orders earlier. These never change behavior. If you take the program away, he goes back to ordering late.
6. If the grower wants to put your seed in his test plot against competitors you should agree to it and don’t be afraid of a challenge. There are so many things wrong with using test plots, I don’t have enough time to talk about all of them. I have won so many test plots and the farmers wouldn’t buy my seed. It’s last year’s information from last year’s environment creating invalid decisions for the next year.
7. If the grower wants to do a side-by-side comparison with your seed against a competitor, agree to it. History has proven this strategy doesn’t work either. I’ve beat competitors side-by-side by 20 bushel and prospects with the side by sides still wouldn’t buy. That proves they don’t yield, they buy based on perceptions of the company they’ve been most loyal to. 
8. Dress like the farmer customer so he can better identify with you and feel you’re on equal ground. The easiest way to show you are bringing value to a conversation is by LOOKING LIKE you bring value. The better you dress, the smarter you look. Seed is the most serious purchase a farmer makes, he needs a serious professional to buy it from, not someone in blue jeans who looks like the farmer himself.
9. It’s ok to discuss the markets and weather during the conversation to create rapport. These conversations only lower attitudes and don’t solve any problems. Stay totally away from them. When a farmer asks a question about either of those just say, “I don’t know” and move on.
10. The key to getting a sale is reaching an agreement with the grower by negotiating on the price of your products and services. There is never negotiation when selling farmers their inputs. Were bringing values greatly exceeding the price the grower is paying and need to keep him focused on increasing production, not just saving money.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, NONE of those rules are relevant in today’s marketplace. So many companies still follow them yet can’t figure out why they’re struggling to grow. I hope you’re not one of them.

Happy Selling,

Rod Osthus